The Ministry of the bishop Arthur Malmgren

Mikhail Vitalyevich Shkarovskii Doctor in history, chief archivist, the Central State archive of Saint-Petersburg (ulitsa Antonova-Ovseenko, 1, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 193168), shkarovs@mail.ru

Shkarovskii M. V. The Ministry of the bishop Arthur Malmgren, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2016, vol. 5, pp. 250–262.

doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2016-00012

Language: Russian

The article is devoted to the Ministry of the bishop Arthur Malmgren in the USSR in 1920–1930s. Arthur Malmgren is undoubtedly one of the most important figures not only in the history of the German Lutheran community of St. Petersburg, but also in the history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia. His heroic and tragic Ministry was aimed entirely at preservation and development of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the difficult conditions of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary events and politics, when increasingly totalitarian, in fact anti-religious, regime was developing. Arthur Malmgren managed to do quite a lot: he held the General Synod in 1924, at that the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Soviet Union was established, then he founded the Leningrad Preachers Seminary, which functioned until 1934. But in the end his case was lost. Having experienced severe personal drama, the bishop moved to Germany, where he died. In general, the article is based on the extended archical sources and is the first exhaustive attempt of study of the bishop Arthur Malmgren’s biography.
Creative Commons License

Key words: Evangelical Lutheran Church, Bishop, USSR, Leningrad, Seminary

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/shkarovskii-m-v-2016-en/

download PDF
HTML